How are the gardens?

What are "multiplier onions"? I think I kind of have an idea, but how does that work?

We have tons of blueberries and radishes. Tomatoes yet to come. Lettuce and carrots did not take.
 
Coyote33 said:
What are "multiplier onions"? I think I kind of have an idea, but how does that work?

We have tons of blueberries and radishes. Tomatoes yet to come. Lettuce and carrots did not take.
Click to expand...

Multiplier or potato onions produce a number of bulbs from a single small bulb planted in the fall. I bought mine from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. The nice thing is that you never have to worry about seed or sets again. You keep the largest bulbs to eat and then replant the smaller bulbs in the fall like garlic. This is my first year planting them. I planted about half in my regular garden and half in my raised bed. For whatever reason most in the raised bed died. Dont know why. The yield was pretty good. I had maybe 15 planted and got better than 40 onions of various sizes. We are only eating the largest couple and I will replant all the rest this fall. Hopefully in a couple years this will expand enough to meet our yellow onion needs. I might buy some more from them again to give us a quicker return.
 
Spotty results so far: a bunch of my cukes, beans and peas were attacked by chucks - they may be cute in the Geiko ads, but I wish the bastids painful death..... MisterHappyJr buried the bottom of the bunny fence and that seems to pretty much do the trick. The fishing line deer excluder

Tomatoes are growong well, and the others stuff is coming back. I"ve got a few pickilng cukes, snow and sugar snap peas, and green beans - only enough to have a garnish, not a main course.

First time I've tries onions - they seem to be doing well.

Rain collection is working well, I've not had to use the town water for the season yet. The current rainstorm will recharge the barrels. [smile]

Anyone know where I can rent a coyote for chuck and bunny control? [rolleyes][laugh]
 
My neighbor gave me about a 1/2 bushel of green beans. He also has garlic and onions. I may try to bum some starters off him this fall. Thanks for the info coastie.
 
Here in Northern CT we've finally begun getting good production. We canned up 24 quarts of sweet pickles (both traditional and one batch with Splenda!) on Saturday as well as two crocks of very traditional "Polish Dills" complete with a slice of seedless rye bread on top. They've turned out to be the best I've ever made. We've also been eating through all of our lettuce and will replace 1/2 of the row for another crop. Squash has finally begun to produce, too. We've had an extreme lack of bees to pollinate so I've been using a male blossom and helping along so production there has begun to pick up.

Believe it or not we've also begun to pick green peppers. They're so beautifully formed and tasty! Now if we can only begin to see some red tomatoes. I've planted three varieties and they're all loaded up with beautiful green globes but nothing red yet. Hopefully in another week or so we'll be canning our butts off once again.

One small problem I do have is "excess nitrogen" according to my farmer friend. My radishes went right to tap roots with excessive greens. This soil is virgin, too, and I didn't add any nitrogen fertilizer to it. I suspect that next year it won't be so intense and the root veggies will do better. I'm very pleased with this project and plan on expanding the size by 40% next year.

Rome
 
So my corn is looking great and I have a couple hundreed pounds of beautiful green paste tomatoes that are all about to be wiped out by this storm. I think the squash and beans will be OK but the rest is toast. I am pissed because this corn is for seed to store. Maybe I will get lucky but it doesnt look good. This reinforces why you need to store staples for more than 1 season. A bad harvest now is an inconvenience but in the future it could be starvation.
 
tons and tons of cherry, grape and plumb tomatoes here. we have so many cherries that we're using them for sauce. cuc's, zuc's, beans, lettuce, jalapeno peppers, and green peppers are all booming well this season.
Next year I am going to try potatoes and a couple of other root types.
 
Well, we had got a couple zucchini, but storm killed the plants. Tomatoes mostly did well. Actually harvested enough for a couple gallons of sauce, which is how I spent Saturday. Cukes took a big hit in the storm too, but at least I already had a halfdozen jars of pickles made.
 
Excellent...
I love the fact that some "regular" people are amazed at others that garden.. It makes me wonder.. How AND/or where those people were raised.. When I was growing up my grandfather was always gardening he grew up through the depression and taught me all about the "Victory" gardens..
 
Rancho said:
Excellent...
..
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When you consider I live in Somerville an my total amount of land is less than many peoples' front lawns, we do pretty well. We also lost some plums which were just coming ripe but still plenty on tree for eating and preserves. Grapes are almost ripe as well. Peppers, beans, onions and carrots are all fine after the storm. We also planted blueberries this year. Probably a few more years before they really produce, but there was enough to throw in breakfast every now and then.
 
bfm said:
...We also planted blueberries this year. ....
Click to expand...

so that's where those birds came from that flew over my parked car...[smile]

I just have four 'mater plants (sweet 100's and beef steak), and cukes. They made it through ok. Planning on more stuff next year.
 
Amazon said:
so that's where those birds came from that flew over my parked car...[smile]

.
Click to expand...
Have to admit the cardinals got a lot of them. Someting also nibbles some of the veg. It tried an onion. Didn't seem to like it. It did eat most of a cuke and part of a zuc.
 
That's usually my battle, keeping the critters out. I put a fence around this year and lined it with marigolds. It was an "investment" but seemed to pay off. No cukes were taken (lost them all last year), and only a couple of 'maters got a chomp. Lost most of my beef steaks (80%) last year. The war was on! lol

Neighbors in back of me gave up...said there's a woodchuck in the hood. [hmmm]
 
Corn is flat. I am going to leave it down and see what happens. Not optimistic but we will see. Tomatoes survived OK. Should still get a decent crop.
 
Have a couple of tomatoes that got leveled from the storm. Lost some sunflowers and a nice morning glory. Peppers, beans and most tomatoes survived. It's interesting to see what made it through the storm and what didn't.
 
Manure is spread, garden is tilled and raked. Ready to put in onions, lettuce, and soon carrots and potatoes. Will wait a few weeks for cukes, tomatoes, beans, pumpkins, watermelon, peppers.
 
Planted 4 apple trees Sunday afternoon. Limed it yesterday morning. Planted 2 good rows of potatoes tonight. Up next are carrots, radishes, and lettuce. Then I will start tomato, cuke, watermelon, and pumpkin seeds indoors, to go in the ground around Labor Day. Plugged charger into my tractor tonight also. Next is time to give the grass and pool some attention.
 
Very weedy. Potatoes and tomatoes coming nicely. Pepper not so nice.

Blueberries are AWESOME.


Dill said:
Potatoes are one of the odd crops like blueberries which prefer to grow in acidic soils. So don't lime those rows.
Click to expand...
Just read this again. I put all my ashes from Winter on my blueberries. They are thriving on it.
 
Potatoes are coming in great. I lost all of my peas to the bumper crop of rabbits. Most of the carrots and beets went to rabbit food, too.
 
I had wanted to report in earlier int he season but with all the rain we thought we had lost our garden because it flooded and choked a lot of the plants but, some survived. The squash zucchini and some tomatoes made it. We've been having great success with what's left. Next season we move the garden to higher ground and away from what seems to be a blighted area.
 
Beans, tomatos and herbs are feeding the rabbits and groundhog nicely. The kids will kill me if I eliminated them.
 
Other than the fact it looks like a crab grass festival it's producing well. We've frozen 5 quarts of beans, canned 7 pints of dilly beans, 5 large zucchini, about 7 quarts of broccoli and tons of lettuce.

That's on top of all we've eaten so far. Can't wait until my tomatoes start to get ripe we should have TONS of tomatoes.
 
Birds are my worst enemies this year, robins in particular. They ate all the green beans before they reach 2' tall. Tomatoes, cucumbers are doing great. Lettuce is growing awesome too, in the fenced-in portion of the garden.
 

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